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July 14, 2024
Commentary Bare Necesities
Making Fun A Habit Series
30 days to add fun to your creative practice. I will be going through Mike Brennan's Make Fun A Habit workbook and help you make fun a habit. I had the pleasure of interviewing Mike on my other podcast Find A Podcast About and talking about his podcast Creative Chats. This workbook leads you through steps to rekindle the fun in your life and get you in a space where you are your most creative. This is a 30-day book and I will be tackling each day as if it were a week and providing you insights on how you can use his ideas in your creative practice. Each chapter is broken up with a short story, questions to ponder, action items, and tips.
Assignment
Questions
- What ordinary objects already around you can repurposed in your process?
- Are there other systems or structures that can be adapted into a new process?
- What objects draw your attention? Why? How can you use them in your current projects or processes?
Action Item
- Make a birdhouse out of milk cartons
- Turn an old t-shirt into a tote bag
- Create a sculpture out of recycled materials
- Write a poem about an ordinary object
- Compose a song about an ordinary object
Tips
- Use everyday objects as inspiration
- Experiment with different materials
- Be creative with your use of colors
- Don't be afraid to get messy
Reach Out To The Podcast
To reach out to me, email timothy@createartpodcast.com I would love to hear about your journey and what you are working on. If you would like to be on the show or have me discuss a topic that is giving you trouble write in and let's start that conversation.
- Email: timothy@createartpodcast.com
- YouTube Channel: Create Art Podcast YT Channel
- IG: @createartpodcast
- Twitter: @createartpod
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Transcript
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Create art podcast, commentary, bare necessities.
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Hello friend.
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This is Timothy Kiem O'Brien, your head instigator for create art podcast,
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where I bring my over 30 years of experience in the arts and education
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world to help you tame your inner critic and create more than you consume.
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So I'm continuing on with the make.
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Fun A Habit series.
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And it's a 30 day workbook and it's put on by Michael Brennan.
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And the book is called Make Fun A Habit.
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And what it does is it gives you different things each day
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that you can utilize to put fun.
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Back into your life and make fun a habit for yourself.
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Now I heard about it from his podcast, creative chats.
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And again, links to the book into the podcast will be in the show notes for you.
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I was reading through the book and I really enjoyed everything
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that he was trying to do.
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And so I thought, well, Why don't I just do an episode for each day?
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So that'll give me 30 episodes for this.
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And we're just about halfway through the book here.
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So if you've missed the other episodes, definitely check them out.
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And learn from Mike and myself and how you can put fun back into your life.
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So today we're talking about the bare necessities.
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Now I'm not talking about, you know, the the song in the jungle book, you know,
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the bare necessities, although I'm a big bear and I love that love that show.
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But we're, what we're talking about is what are the bare
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necessities for you to do your art.
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Whatever that art is, whether it be composing music, writing.
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Sculpture, painting, whatever you're interested in.
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What are the bare necessities that you need?
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And that's going to be different with each and every artistic discipline.
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Now, a lot of times we think, man, this is going to be really expensive.
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You know, it's going to be really expensive to to start a painting or,
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you know, to get my book published, but there's ways around that.
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You can use the materials around your house that you currently have right
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now to paint a wonderful picture.
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You don't have to go to the art stores, which Hey, you know, I love
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going to the art stores as well.
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We have a Michael's locally here and I love to take my
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wife and my kids to the store.
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And then when we you know, check out, it's just like, Oh, ouch, that hurts.
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And a lot of times we can get.
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Stopped by how much it's going to cost us.
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But you can always like for paintings, you can always reuse canvases.
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You can always, you know, there's, I'm sure there's junk around your house, quote
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unquote junk, and you can put it together and make a sculpture out of it, or like
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me, I'd like collecting comic books.
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I made a collage a couple of years ago, just by cutting out some comic book
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things It was a book that was promoting comic books coming out in the new year.
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So I took out some of those pictures, cut out some of those
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pictures and slapped it together and made a made a collage out of it.
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So I'm sure you have something like that in your house.
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A couple of years back, I did a sculpture of a door and deadbolt.
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I tore it apart and then I put it together in a different way
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and I made a sculpture out of it.
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Why not?
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You know, you're only limited by your imagination.
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So your artwork does not have to the materials for your artwork
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don't have to be that expensive.
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When we're talking about music creation, you can go, let's say
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you want to you know do a guitar song, you know, a song on guitar.
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You can go to your local Salvation Army or or thrift store or
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something, something like that.
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And go get an old guitar and start strumming on it.
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And then once you get better, you get better strings.
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Maybe you go to a guitar store and get a better guitar, get a beginner, you
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know, get a brand new beginner guitar.
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Once you start making money from your art, doesn't matter.
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We all have to start from somewhere.
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With podcasting, we all start with zero audience.
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I know when I started my podcast journey back in 2006, I
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started off with zero audience.
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Now I have people in Singapore listening to this podcast.
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I have people in Romania, a ton of different countries.
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Canada is a huge country for me, France, Germany, the UK.
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People are listening to this podcast from all over the world, and I want to thank
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you all for doing that, but it all started with me Using what I had available.
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I used a media host called blog talk radio and My cordless phone and I
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did it that way and I put out You know, about 60 episodes that way.
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Now, when I got better at it and when I became more serious about podcasting
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and about 2016, that's when I started to add microphones and different
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software and started investing in it.
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So I took my hobby.
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Which was podcasting, and I got serious about it, and that's when I started
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spending a little bit of money here and there and to have the setup that I
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have right now, but you can start with.
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Let's say you want to do drawing.
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You can start with the pencil that may be in the junk drawer and a piece of
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paper and just start sketching every day.
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You know, you can set up your own still life.
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Every day.
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One of the things that I did back in in college, we had a intro to
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drawing class and our instructor there loved techno music.
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He was from the UK, loved techno music.
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So he would have that blaring.
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throughout the whole class.
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And his first assignment was in your book bags, pull everything out, put it in front
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of you, draw it, just draw how it looks.
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You know, I had a pack of cigarettes.
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I had a lighter.
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I had my keys.
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I had my wallets and that's all I had.
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But it was stuff that I already had, so I didn't spend a dime on it.
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Now, did I spend money for the class?
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Yeah, absolutely.
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I did, you know, and I'm still paying for it these days.
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I'm still paying, you know, college tuition for it these days, but.
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The objects that I had right then and there are what I
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first started to learn with.
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And you don't have to, you know, go to Michael's or go to Blick's and,
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and, and buy stuff left and right.
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You can use what you have right there in front of you.
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So I definitely, you know, challenge you to take a look around your house.
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You know, you have an idea of what you would like, you know, in a perfect world,
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I could wave my magic wand and I could give you all the supplies that you needed.
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But really what would you learn from that?
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You would learn to rely on me to wave my magic wand, which I'm not going to do.
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Okay.
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I'm not going to wave my magic wand.
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I need it for myself that I mentioned.
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I have wife and kids that like to go to Michael's.
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So I need that magic wand for myself.
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Maybe one day it'll pay for our Michael's trips, but just look around your house.
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If, if you want to do sketching or painting or even photography, You
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probably have a phone right now.
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You probably have a smartphone right now that has a fantastic camera on it.
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We've talked to professional photographers on this show that have said your camera
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on your phone is better than most of the cameras that are out there.
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So you already have something that you can use in your hands right now.
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Go ahead and utilize it.
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And Make art with it.
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You know again, your music, you want to be a musician, you want to play
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guitar, go to the thrift store, grab an old guitar, or you can go on to
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like Facebook marketplace or next door and somebody will have something
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that they're trying to get rid of.
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Utilize that for yourself because that's the bare necessity.
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You just need something.
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It doesn't have to be perfect.
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It doesn't have to be beautiful.
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It doesn't have to be, you know, finished.
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It just has to be something.
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And that's where you start.
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And then you get better at drawing that.
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And then you move on to new things and better things.
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And that's where you go with that.
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So getting back to making fun, I have it.
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Mike gives us questions, action items, and tips.
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So let's go ahead and jump into the questions.
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First question is what ordinary objects already around you can
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you repurpose in your process.
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So I'm into a lot of different arts.
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You know, I love to draw, I love to paint I love to write I love to make music.
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So what do I have right here?
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Well, I do have a bass guitar that needs to be restrung so I could use that.
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I have a couple of keyboards here that I can use to make music.
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I have a.
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Uh, music making program called magics that the intro music that
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you heard used it with that.
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Now that cost me 50, 30, I'm sorry, 20 a month to do that, but they have free
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versions of that kind of stuff too.
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So find out what is free, do a little bit of research on that.
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And I'm sure you're going to be able to find objects in your house that
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you can use to start a project with.
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Next question is, are there other systems or structures that can
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be adapted into a new process?
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So, 1 thing that I really have wanted to work on in the past year is my
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drawing and I recently went out to Michael's and I got some some specialized
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markers because I had an idea of something that I had saw on Tik TOK.
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And I thought, well, let me go ahead and give this a shot.
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You know, let me, let me try to do this.
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At first I tried it with colored pencils and looked okay.
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But then I got these specialized markers, which cost a little bit of money.
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The first thing I did as I tried it with what I had it in
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hand, which was colored pencils.
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And then I moved up from there and to create something that, You know, I was
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pretty happy with my first time out.
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It was a watercolor markers and they didn't cost that much.
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And, you know, there was, you know, you could get, you know 12, 18, 32, 64.
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I went with the 32 because I wanted to have a lot, a lot of choices and colors.
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And they were double ended.
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So one was a fine point tip and one was more of a brush tip.
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And I found that that worked great for me.
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So I use that in the process, made a piece of art that I really enjoyed,
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made a little sketch that I really enjoyed and really got me excited.
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And I showed it to the online groups that I'm with and they really liked it
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too, they were very supportive of it.
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So think about.
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You know, the final goal or the, you know, the final project may be huge,
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maybe outside of your reach monetarily.
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Well, what can you do that's similar to that, that can be
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done a little bit cheaper?
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Next question is what objects draw your attention and why?
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And how can you use them in your current projects or processes?
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What objects draw my attention?
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Everything draws my attention.
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I'm looking at everything.
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So right now I'm looking at a lot of geometric patterns and different
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ways to do that kind of stuff.
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So that's what's, what really draws my eye and what I did to kind of, make
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those pop is to get these watercolor markers and give them, give them
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a try just to give them a shot.
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And it actually worked out really well for me.
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So I challenge you to go ahead and figure out what objects are drawing your
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attention and then use them, use those objects or those processes to go ahead
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and update your, update your process.
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Because we're always, Learning, growing, and evolving.
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At least we should be.
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So action items.
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First one, make a birdhouse out of milk cartons.
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Now, back in my day, you know, the milk cartons are made out of cardboard,
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but now they're made out of plastic.
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I've seen people cut them in half and turn them into candles, you know,
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or to turn them into luminaries, but why not make a birdhouse out of it?
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That would be great.
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You know, bring birds to your house.
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Maybe you cut off the top of and just leave the bottom and
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fill it up with bird seed.
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Boom.
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There's a birdhouse or you cut it in half and put some sticks in there.
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So that way they can have some cover at the top and the birds
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can go in there and get the food.
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That's an idea.
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There you go.
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Steal it, take it.
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And then you paint the outside a different colors.
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Go for it.
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You know, if you're drinking milk, I don't drink milk, but if you're
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drinking milk, what better way to use it or laundry detergent.
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I would say even, you know, take those laundry detergent and plastic bottles
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that, you know, we throw in the recycling and, and, you know, are so difficult
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to get rid of and do something with them, you know, cut them up in different
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ways and make something out of it.
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Another thing is turning an old t shirt into a tote bag.
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Now I'm guilty about tote bags.
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I just recently went on Canva, made a design for my podcast and threw
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it on a tote bag and brought it with me to a podcast conference.
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But, you know, you can take an old t shirt.
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I'm not wearing an old t shirt right now, but I have plenty of t shirts.
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Why not turn that into a tote bag?
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You know, especially if it's got a little rip or something like
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in it that, you know, you don't want to use the t shirt anymore.
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You don't want to wear it out anymore, or it's really faded.
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Boom, tote bag.
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You can take that to the grocery store to pick up the milk and.
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The laundry detergent that you're going to, as soon as you use up, you're going
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to turn it into something else, create a sculpture out of recycled materials.
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I actually did that with a door and a deadbolt set.
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You know, you just tear it apart and grab a screwdriver and tear that
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bad boy apart and put it together differently with some super glue.
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And there you go.
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Why not?
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Who else is doing that?
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Not a lot of people.
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You can write a poem about an ordinary object.
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I do that all the time.
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I, I'm usually when I'm out and I'm feeling in the mood,
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I want to write a poem.
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I'll just take a look at something or I'll notice something happening.
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Maybe it's, you know, I'm writing a poem about the coffee cup that I have, or
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maybe it's about the couple that's you know, just sitting a few tables down
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from me, or maybe it's the table that I'm sitting at and it has different things
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underneath the glass on top of the table.
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You can write a poem about that.
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Jumping off of that tangent, compose a song about an ordinary object.
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You know, write a song about the time you went down to the coffee shop, write
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a song about the time you went down to the library or to the fast food
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place, you know, what happened there?
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Was there a reason that you went there?
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Were you hungry?
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How, you know, how was your stomach rumbling?
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Compose a song about that.
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If you're into movement and dance, do movement and dance about that.
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So, Mike's tips.
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There's four tips here.
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Use everyday objects as inspiration.
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Going back to my drawing class, my intro to drawing class, what
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was in my book mag at that time?
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Cigarettes, lighter, keys, wallet, pens, and pencils.
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Erasers, use that and then draw that.
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So, you know, look at your nightstand, you know what's on your nightstand.
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Is it just a clock?
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Do you have a picture on your nightstand?
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Snap a picture of it and then draw it.
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And that way you can, you know, have that picture right in front of you.
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And you can copy from that drawing and then add to it.
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Maybe you want something else at that nightstand.
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Maybe you want a vase of flowers.
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You know, so make that drawing into something that you
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wish was on your nightstand.
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Experiment with different materials.
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Again, who makes a sculpture of doorknobs and a deadbolt?
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This guy right here does.
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So, you know, try different materials that you have.
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Right now I am in the process of making some clocks and what I'm going
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to do is I'm going to take do, do it with a laser cutter to, to cut out.
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The body of the clock and you know, make it so it's kind of finger jointed in there
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and that's the first time I've done it.
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Why not?
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I need a clock in my room anyways.
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So one that actually works.
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I have one here that has a map of the world like an old timey map
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of the world clock doesn't work.
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So it's constantly at 2 10.
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So it's always 2 10 here in my office.
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Try different materials with that.
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I've made clocks out of books.
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Give that a shot for yourself.
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Next tip is to be creative with your use of colors.
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And I did that with one of my latest drawings.
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I was.
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Using different colors that I don't normally use.
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I don't normally gravitate to, and it really added some spice to this drawing.
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Really made it pop.
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So definitely use the different colors that you have available for you.
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The last and certainly not least.
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I have kids.
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Don't afraid to get messy.
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When I was gluing together the deadbolt and the and the doorknob, I ripped the
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skin off my hand a couple of times, but you know, don't be afraid to get messy.
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Who's going to, nobody's going to see the messy part unless that's,
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you know, unless you're taking the picture of you getting messy,
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nobody's going to see that messy part.
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They're going to see.
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the final object.
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You know, when I'm doing paintings, I get paint all over my hands.
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People don't see that.
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They see what I put on the canvas.
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So we don't need to worry about that.
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Basically what, what, what I'm trying to tell you here
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is don't worry about the cost.
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Don't worry about the messiness.
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Don't worry about the mistakes.
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Just get out there and go ahead and do it for yourself.
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And you're going to feel wonderful.
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Heck, you're They're great gifts to give for holidays, for birthdays.
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You don't have to go to the big box stores and get somebody a 45 inch screen TV.
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It would be nice.
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You could do that for me.
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I already have one, but.
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By all means, do that for yourself and do it for your loved ones.
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And you can give those gifts or you can, you know, create something online where,
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you know, with Etsy or with eBay or Redbubble, what have you, and create that
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art so that way you can sell that art.
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To your audience.
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Okay.
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Well, we've reached that time of the show where I'm going to let you
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go ahead and get on with your day.
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I'm going to go ahead and get on with my day.
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But first and foremost, I want to thank you for listening
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and definitely appreciate it.
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No matter where you are in the world.
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Definitely appreciate the time that you've taken here with me to go ahead
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and listen to my ramblings about art.
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Really appreciate that.
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I've been doing this since 2006 and you know, every time I take a look at
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my numbers, I always see people from different countries people from all
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around the United States taking a listen.
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So that says a lot about you, that you took time out of your day to listen
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to me talk, and I appreciate that.
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I want to let you know that.
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You can reach out to me.
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My email is Timothy at createartpodcast.
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com and I'm definitely wanting to hear about your journey,
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about what you're working on.
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So feel free to email me.
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You can use that email to give me ideas about topics that
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you would like me to discuss.
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Maybe you would like to be a guest on the show.
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Definitely email me and let me know what what kind of stuff you want to talk
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about and we'll get you on the show.
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It's not a problem.
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I promise I don't bite too much.
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And then if you have critique of the show that you'd like to give me, shoot
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me an email, let me know about it.
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You can, you know, rate and review this on your podcast app of choice.
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That's perfectly fine.
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But if If you, you know, have some critique, I'd have to go ahead and email
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me, let me know, basically, I want to turn this into a five star podcast for you.
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And I can't do that.
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If you don't let me know what I'm doing right or what I'm doing wrong.
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And as specific as you can get, would be very helpful to me.
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So I do appreciate that in advance of you doing that.
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I want to also let you know that I do have a newsletter that I do
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about once a month and that is on Substack and you can get to it.
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Timothy Bryan, Bryan is spelled B R I E N.
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substack.
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com and in that newsletter comes out once a month.
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I give you some ideas for what you could do for that month.
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I also let you know the episodes that I've done for that month.
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So definitely check it out for yourself.
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Only comes out once a month.
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You can always unsubscribe if you're getting too many emails, but it's a way
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that I can, you know, between episodes, reach out to you and say, Hey, here's some
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ideas and give you some ideas for things that you can do in your creative process.
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Also, I run another podcast.
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It's called find a podcast about, you can find it at find
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a podcast about dot X, Y, Z.
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And there I go ahead and review podcasts that I find very binge worthy and
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help you outsmart the algorithm and find your next binge worthy podcast.
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So definitely give that podcast to check and to see if I have some podcasts in
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there that you've never heard about before and why I think it's They are
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worth your time because we all have a limited amount of time in this world.
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And when we're creating our stuff, it's nice to have a
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podcast on in the background.
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So I'll let you know which podcasts that I have in the
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background happening all the time.
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So check me out over there.
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All right.
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It's that time.
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So again, thank you for listening and thank you for being a part of this
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because you definitely are a part of this and you are the reason why I do this.
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I hope you got something out of it.
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Now go out there and tame your inner critic, create more than you consume.
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Go around your house, find some stuff to repurpose into art and go and make
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some art for somebody you love yourself.
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I'll talk to you next time.
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